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Thursday, July 5, 2012

Tunnels And Trolls Solo RPG Review

Over the years I've played lots of different RPG's from Dungeons and Dragons to Star Wars to a few different Gurps games and much more. I've enjoyed them all and have found that some of the best games were more about the people I was playing with and not the game I was playing. When I think about a pen and paper RPG my mind always thinks group games and not solo games.

I recently discovered the RPG Tunnels and Trolls and for those of you who don't know it was the second RPG ever written. Honestly, in all my years of gaming, I do not know how it has slipped under my radar. Not able to do much gaming with anyone else lately I was searching for games I could play solo and that's when I found it. This intrigued me, I've never heard of a tabletop RPG that I could play solo.

I went looking and found a free lite copy of the rules on e23, you can also get them from Drive Thru RPG so you can check them out if you're interested. The rules play like an old school dungeon crawler which I liked and the rules are easy to learn. I was able to play a game pretty quickly without a lot of page flipping. Unlike other systems, you don't have to search from book to book looking up a specific rule.

The game is a bit more laid back unlike some of the more mainstream games. An example is Talents, when you create a character you get one Talent. The rules in the book give you a few examples but they say that you make up your own. As long as you can make a logical reason for having the Talent you just pick what you want and go with it. I like that.

Now to the solo gaming. For those that you remember them the solo adventures work a bit like Choose Your Own Adventure Books. The books tell you a bit of story and give you a choice of going left or right or to fight or to run from the dragon and so on. Tunnels and Trolls are similar but instead of just choosing what you want you to need to roll against your abilities. It all works great and I had lots of fun but it gets down to how honest you are. Say you open a door and a troll that has a monster rating of 60 is waiting for you and this is your second time adventuring your choices are to throw your life away in battle or cheat your way out of it. Fortunately, each adventure lists what level you should be at before you start.

In the end, that game is great fun. There are a few places you can look on the Internet for free solo adventures. A couple of the adventures are originals from the 80's that are programmed into the computer so you don't even have to do any page turning you just do your rolls and click if you made them or not. So you have a free lite rule set and free solo and group adventures you can try out before you have to lay any money down so what do you have to lose?